Goombella

About

Goombella is a character that appears in the 2004 video game Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (TTYD) and its 2024 remake. Goombella is a female Goomba, a species best known for their loyalty to Bowser. However, Goombella acts as Mario's first ally in TTYD, using her knowledge as an archaeology student to help him on his quest in the game. Online, Goombella has gathered a notable fan following since her introduction to the series, with people making fan art and memes reinterpreting her in different art styles.

Origin

While Goombas are typically known for being loyal to the Super Mario villain Bowser, Goombella is depicted as an independent resident of Rogueport studying archaeology at the University of Goom. She is Mario's first ally in the TTYD, joining his party after he saved her from being attacked by Lord Crump and his minions.^[1]

Goombella has the same attack abilities as Goombario from Paper Mario and regularly informs Mario about different characters, items and environments in the game. Toward the end of TTYD, Goombella notably hints at romantic interest in Mario.

Spread

I Was At Riverside Station Memes

In 2016, Redditors in /r/PaperMario shared memes following the phrasal template, "I was at Riverside Station," editing different images and phrases into Goombella's dialogue box. The meme was likely inspired by a May 25th, 2016, post by Redditor /u/USFBullsfan93, with Redditor^[2] /u/xmlns posting an edit of Goombella's original Tattle on May 28th to reflect a Marxist message (seen below, top).

On November 27th, 2016, Redditor^[3] /u/AgentMuffin4 posted a version of the meme to show a screenshot from a website that had been spamming the /r/PaperMario subreddit that year (seen below, bottom).

Fan Art

Goombella has been the subject of fan art made by TTYD fans for years, with fans redrawing Goombella to give her more human proportions. Fur Affinity^[4] user Fyxe posted Goombella fan art on August 27th, 2015, gathering over 8,000 views and 400 favorites on the site (seen below, left).

X^[5] user @franmm127 posted Goombella fan art on December 13th, 2019, gathering over 2,000 likes in five years (seen below, right).

Search Interest

External References